Sunday, April 17, 2005

BTD SUNDAY COMICS [Begging To Differ] 8:48:28 PM    comment []

Jack sez: I'm no Howard Zinn. And this amounts to shameless self-promotion, but here goes. If you've got children, students, relatives, or friends in grades 4 to 6, you might be interested in buying a new book I've co-authored, American History Comic Books. It's 12 mini comic books with a zany time traveler visiting key moments in U.S. history, with background notes, review quizzes, related weblinks, and a biographical glossary. Stay Free-friendly topics include the immigrant experience, women's suffrage, and even a negative panel about Henry Ford. My fellow writer is Joe D'Agnese, who also co-authored this terrific book. Illustrations are by the wonderful Mark Zingarelli, whose work you may recognize from the 2005 WFMU Marathon t-shirt. Thanks for your time. [Stay Free! Daily] 8:45:16 PM    comment []

An Argument for Contextualism about Ethics. The point of this post is to float an argument for contextualism about ethics. I don’t want to endorse the argument. Indeed my main interest is in seeing how it compares to arguments for contextualism about other domains, especially epistemology. The argument takes as its starting point some experiments performed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky summarised here. [Thoughts Arguments and Rants] Long enough that I don't want to repost the whole thing here, but I'll note that it concludes: I’m sure I’m missing something here, but it looks to me like this kind of contextualism - one that takes Kahneman/Tversky experiments to reveal how to change the context in relevant ways rather than ways in which subjects make systematic mistakes - is just as strong as other kinds of contextualism. This suggests that the stakes in contextualism debates are somewhat higher than we might have thought. Very, very interesting. The comments may be worth following, too. I think Brian's raised the stakes in the contextualism debate. 9:39:14 AM    comment []

Robin discusses the absence of female cartoon animals and continues the conversation about female-friendliness in cartooning in Calling All 2-D, XX Animals. [Girl in the Locker Room!] 9:36:55 AM    comment []

An Update on Stuff That's Cool (Like Google's Photo Maps). A "where are they now?" report on Skype telephone calls, Google Maps and access to National Weather Service data. By JAMES FALLOWS. [NYT > Business] 9:35:48 AM    comment []

(Some of) Roland's Sunday Smart Trends #54. News Sites Solicit Articles Straight From Readers Newspaper publishers are eager to find new ways to connect to readers -- daily newspaper circulation dropped 11% between 1990 and 2003, so they're turning their readers into reporters. Source: Vauhini Vara, The Wall Street Journal Online, April 11, 2005 (Paid subscription necessary, but it might be freely available) Breach at LexisNexis Now Appears Larger Reed Elsevier, owner of the LexisNexis databases, said Tuesday that Social Security numbers, driver's license information and the addresses of 310,000 people may have been stolen, 10 times more than it originally reported last month. Source: Heather Timmons, The New York Times, April 13, 2005 (Free registration, but permanent link) It's a whole Neo world Neopets.com is a raging success. But some find it inappropriate and even scary. Source: Craig Rosen, Special to The Los Angeles Times, April 14, 2005 (Free registration) Texting to help SA HIV patients Mobile phone text messaging is being used to help South African HIV patients with the complicated process of taking anti-retroviral drugs in an initiative by Cape Town University. Source: Nick Miles, BBC News Online, April 14, 2005 'Minority Report' interface created for US military A real version of the futuristic display system controlled by hand-gestures enables military experts to sort through information quickly. Source: Will Knight, New Scientist, April 15, 2005 The biggest family tree ever This project hopes to trace your ancestors back 10,000 years: National Geographic and IBM are embarking on the Genographic Project, a landmark, five-year global study of human migratory history. The project will reveal how our ancestors diversified into different groups and what routes they took as they spread out over the Earth. Source: University of Arizona news release, via EurekAlert!, April 15, 2005 It's impressive, scary to see what a Zaba search can do What makes ZabaSearch great is that, at no cost, it quickly and comprehensively places a remarkable amount of data about people right at your fingertips. What makes ZabaSearch frightening is that, at no cost, it quickly and comprehensively places a remarkable amount of data about people right at your fingertips. Source: David Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle, April 15, 2005 See you next week... [Smart Mobs -- selected but not otherwise edited here] 9:33:14 AM    comment []

Johnson's Dictionary. Two hundred fifty years ago, Samuel Johnson published the first edition of his Dictionary of the English Language, compiled and written almost wholly by himself. By VERLYN KLINKENBORG. [NYT > Opinion] 9:30:34 AM    comment []